Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:40:36.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The acquisition of colour terms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Gail Rex Andrick
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Boston
Helen Tager-Flusberg*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Boston
*
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA.

Abstract

The acquisition of colour terms in pre-school-aged children was investigated in two studies. The first study explored the role of conceptual factors in 2-, 3- and 4-year-old children's performance on two tasks. Comprehension and production of basic colour words were tested using stimuli that varied in focality. The results confirmed earlier research demonstrating the important and early influence of focality on children's colour concepts and developing colour lexicon. However, only moderate support was obtained for the order-of-acquisition hypothesis proposed by Berlin & Kay (1969). Quite large discrepancies between comprehension and production were found in this study, with no clear relationship between these two performances. In the second study the role of maternal input on children's learning of colour words was investigated, using the spontaneous speech transcripts from Adam, Eve and Sarah. Significant correlations between mothers' and children's uses of specific colour words were found across all three subjects. The findings from both studies confirm that both conceptual and environmental factors are important in shaping the child's developing colour concepts and colour lexicon, particularly for mapping out the boundaries of the basic colour spaces, which are culturally, rather than innately, determined.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research described in this paper was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (5 RO1 MH 37074). We are grateful to the children and teachers in the following schools for participating in the study: University of Massachusetts Boston Child Care Center; Harvard Yard Child Care Center; and Soldiers Field Park Children's Center. The research was part of an Honors thesis by the first author, submitted to the Psychology department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Some of the data reported in this paper were presented at the Third International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Austin, Texas, July 1984.

References

REFERENCES

Anglin, J. M. (1977). Word, object, and conceptual development. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Barrett, M. D. (1982). Distinguishing between prototypes: the early acquisition of the meaning of object names. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development, Vol. 1. Syntax and semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bartlett, E. J. (1978). The acquisition of the meaning of color terms: a study of lexical development. In Campbell, R. N. & Smith, P. T. (eds), Proceedings of the NATO conference on the psychology of language. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Blewitt, P. (1983). Dog versus collie: vocabulary in speech to young children. DevPsychol 19. 602–9.Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Kessen, W. & Weiskopf, S. (1976). The categories of hue in infancy. Science 191. 201–2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowerman, M. (1978). The acquisition of word meaning: an investigation into some current conflicts. In Waterson, N. & Snow, C. (eds), The development of communication. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. & Hecht, B. F. (1983). Comprehension, production, and language acquisition. Annual Review of Psychology 34. 325–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruse, D. A. (1977). A note on the learning of colour names. JChLang 4. 305–11.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. & Kuczaj, S. A. (1982). Toward a theory of substantive word-meaning acquisition. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development. Vol. 1. Syntax and semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Heider, E. R. (1971). ‘Focal’ color areas and the development of color names. DevPsych 4. 447–55.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. G. (1977). The development of color knowledge in preschool children. ChDev 48. 308–11.Google Scholar
Kuczaj, S. A. (1982). Young children's overextensions of object words in comprehension and/or production: support for a prototype theory of early object word meaning. FL 3. 93105.Google Scholar
Mervis, C. B. (1980). Category structure and the development of categorization. In Spiro, R. J., Bruce, B. C. & Brewer, W. F. (eds), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension: perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and education. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mervis, C. B. (1984). Early lexical development: the contributions of mother and child. In Sophian, C. (ed.), Origins of cognitive skills. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mervis, C. B., Catlin, J. & Rosch, E. (1975). Development of the structure of color categories. DevPsych 11. 5460.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L. (1980). Cognition to language: categories, word meanings and training. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L. (1984). A cognition account of differences between children's comprehension and production of language. Western Journal of Speech Communication 48. 145–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E. (1973). On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Rosch, E. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. JExpPsych 104. 192233.Google Scholar
Seiler, Th. B. & Wannenmacher, W. (1983). Concept development and the development of word meaning. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar